Loma harshanam

Loma Harshanam - It means “the hearing of which makes one’s hairs stand on end”.

And one such hearing I had today… the rendering of “Ksheera sagara sayana” in Devagandhari ragam by the unbeaten Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar. The place he goes in to a high with “taraka nama…” is simply, literally hair raising!

The Great Hunt has begun. Any hope?

Oookey… its official then. The great hunt has begun.

I am not talking about the Robert Jordan book. Me talks about the hunt for the person who will have to suffer me for the rest of her life. (Take a joke, ok?) But guess what the trouble is!!!? There are hardly any girls who fall within an acceptable height compared to mine (about 183cms) and even those that do come close, seem to be always from the same, dreaded “Bharadwaja Gothram”. Sucks. And if somehow I manage to find some to my liking, the great Gods (read ‘parents’) throw thunderbolts of flimsy (IMO) reasons to reject it.

Oh well, s***t happens.

But I must confess that I have had quite an amusing time browsing through profiles at you-know-where and am surprised to see that almost every Jane Doe is “God fearing, respects elders, respects tradition, soft-spoken” and would like their partner to be “tall, fair, handsome, well settled, well read, respecting elders and traditions”. Almost 75% of the crowd I have looked at seem to work in either Infosys, CTS, TCS or Wipro. And to boot, many of them prefer only an ‘Amarickaa Mapillai’… and have a fine print saying “would like to pursue higher studies”. (I got nothing against such arrangements but just feeling sorry for unfortunate males, like me, who have to shell out parents money and drag our asses across to USA and get a degree. )

All in all, People, the future looks bleak for me.

O Domine, miserere nobis

Father abuses daughter for 24 years

What more horrors will this world face in the years to come?

Woman

We had this activity of writing a poem about women for last month’s Birthday Bash at work, which took on the theme of Women’s day.

Below is the poem I wrote.

Many a man’s success, many a nation’s demise
Bear the footprint of a woman, with virtue or vice.

Love of the mother, for life given,
Bond of the wife, until life taken,
Like two rains from two clouds in the same sky
One nourishing, other balancing.

Understand the origins of life… I can,
Understand a feminine mind… I cannot.
Contradictions, galore, in harmony… a woman!

Sad state of affairs

Students commiting suicide

News like the one above makes me very, very sad. Committing suicide in fear of exams? What must have driven those young minds to take such terrible, desperate steps? What kind of stress those kids must have been going through before coming to such a disastrous decision? And here we are, complaining about stress at jobs, stress in marriage and what not. We have thousands of crack pot stress relief programs to teach us how to ‘deal’ with stress, effective or not. What do these innocent kids have? Who is to tell them it is alright to have failures in life, leave alone in exams, as long as one doesn’t loses hope? Who is to encourage them to face failure and try again, without denting their confidence and self-esteem?

Education in India is mostly driven by strong emotions of parents who want to see their child ’succeed’ in life. Parents, esp. in India think that hurting their child’s self-esteem by making negative statements about the kids abilities, like comparing their kids with someone else’s, threatening the child with humiliation in event of ‘failure’ (as defined by the parents), will actually make the child want to put in more effort and make the parents proud.

But what does a child know about pride? What does a child know about Indian family politics, where ’status’ is determined by how much one earns and the name of the company he/ she works for?

Statements like

“If you don’t get good marks in the board exams, you will spoil your entire life!”
“All your friends will ridicule you if you don’t study for engineering or MBBS”
“Why don’t you get smart and have only the top rankers in your class as friends?”
“You have to put study efforts for at least 14hrs a day… 8hrs at school, 6hrs at home. If you don’t, you will not get good marks and then you will become worthless!”
“You got only 85% marks!! Miserable wretch! You are only fit to herd pigs!! May be I will get you 50 pigs… no, you won’t be able to do even that!”
…

don’t actually help a child! These kind of comments blows holes in the child’s confidence like a shotgun firing through a sheet of paper. It breaks the fragile minds, giving them a feeling that no matter how hard they try they will not satisfy expectations. Some also begin to believe that if they ‘fail’ in something, ‘they’ have proven to be worthless.

Instead of giving love and affection, parents end up scorning, beating and sometimes even endangering the child’s future as well as life.

I don’t usually see hindi movies… hardly, actually. But I saw ‘Taare Zameen Par’. Excellent movie. There is one statement in that movie which sums up the solution to problems faced by millions of children (Indian, too) throughout the world.

“Parents should stop burdening their children with the huge weight of their own ambitions.”

I completely agree with it.

I hate SMS!

It might seem ironical.

But I really, really am beginning to hate SMS. Don’t get me wrong. I love the utility part… where in if you don’t want to speak to someone, you can just use a template and shoot a message.

What I do hate about SMS is the fact that people begin to replace a 1 min verbal communication by not less than 3 messages! I have seen people glued by their fingers to their mobile phones… always tapping out something… tap tap tap tap tap tap… Arrrghhh!!

First, its painful on your fingers if you overdo it, given the size of the mobile phones and their keypads. Second, its rude to do it when you are with company, especially when you are out at lunch with someone and you keep typing out your messages when the other person is trying to have a conversation.

Even technology has a time, place and circumstance for usage… ‘proper’ usage.

Few things I would like to do…

1. Enforce a rule saying all new bore-wells should be dug bottom-up… not top down. Too many children make it to the news because of such things!!
2. Decree that any school that does not enough space to park at least 500 cars in their grounds should be shifted out of city limits.
3. Convince the city corporation to gather all able-bodied beggars in the city and give them the job of keep Marina beach clean… and make sure they clean it to earn their living. Of course, they will also be covered under the provident fund and are entitled for promotion and salary hikes.
4. Put a blanket ban on use of all types of vehicle horns within the city.
5. In order to reduce the chaos due to the previous rule, introduce a new rule saying that all vehicles should move only at 20Kmph within city limits.
6. Ban all wall-poster printing and posting within the city. The unemployed from that industry can be employed in scratching out, cleaning and re-painting the scarred walls of thousands of buildings in the city.

Yep. Thats about it for now.

Understanding

There are few things that are much harder to understand than the mind of a girl.

Bhairavi Ragam - Exquisite!

I never get tired of listening to the composition of “Amba Kamakshi” by Syama Sastri. Set in Bhairavi Raga, the rendition by Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer was the first one I heard. 30 mins long… it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

I got another 10 min rendition by Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar. Simply Exquisite!! Bhagavathar’s style and dedication only make this hearing experience even more out of this world.

If anyone wants to get a very intense but mind relaxing experience of carnatic music, I seriously suggest listening to this Kriti sung by the above two great singers.

The lyrics and other details can be found here.

Becoming hard hearted?

This is something I wanted to write about for the past year… yes, believe it or not, I never could get myself to pen my thoughts on this.

I walk to office daily (yeah, its about 15mins from my home :)). I always take the same route back and forth.

There are about 5 beggars sitting in various places in my way. A sort of old man with a torn bag, a muslim man with a clean kurta and ‘lungi’ but sporting an always bandaged hands and feet, a woman with very dirty clothes and crutches, an old man who has his hands eaten by leprosy and an old woman who… is just old.

I have been taking the walk to my office for the past 19 months or so by the same route everyday. I was freshly back from USA and you know, my emotions were at war with  reason. (You will not understand it if you haven’t gone through it). Anyway, initially, I used to actually feel sorry for these people and if I had any change in my pockets, I used to drop them to these beggars twice or thrice a week.

But as time passed, I began to literally become numb to seeing these beggars… and stopped giving them alms. My feeling was that these were just trying to live off others’ pity and money. It was fueled by the fact I have seen many other people by now that have the same physical problems as these beggars but are doing some kind of work to earn their bread. That’s my ‘reason’ speaking.

My ‘emotion’ side says I have just become hard hearted… that I no longer reflect on the suffering around me… that I have become just one another machine doing its job day in and day out.

Worries of Beauty

“The beauty of a human face is marred not by age, but by the worries that pile upon the mind over time. That is why a child, no matter who it is, always has a beautiful smile when even the most handsome looking adult has to try hard to even smile!” - A barber in some barbershop in Chennai.

Need to get attention?

What a waste of resources and time!
So now that the government has decreed that the pongal day that begins the month of “Thai” will be celebrated as the Tamil New Year, everyone will start doing so? Hardly!!

Only the “Kalaignar TV” channel’s news reporters will be able to find such celebrations. How? Anywhere people celebrate pongal, the idiots will showcase it as if the people are very happy about celebrating New Year!

How this is a contribution to the tamil community is beyond me… since people have been celebrating the first day of Chithirai month as the Tamil New Year without any issues for as long as I have know.

And the article claims “the Tamil scholars showered encomiums”. Who are the scholars? Surely Karuna’s cronies Duraimurugan and Jegatrakshagan don’t count in, do they?

“This, they said, was the renaissance period of Tamil language. “

Oh, oooh… aaahhh, wow! I can hardly breath. I can imagine Avvaiyar, Kambar, Thiruvalluvar etc. praising this old man from the heavens for his great act!
Stupid asses. Attention whoring at its finest, IMO.

The Right to cheat in Exams

Well, how do you like that?

There are students who demand to be allowed to cheat in exams! And I thought I had seen everything about protesting students.

Welcome to Bihar!

The Balancing act

There are so many fantasy novels and games wherein the world and its Nature are portrayed as a living, sentient entity. In such fantasies, there are people (often powerful Druids and Shamans) who can commune with the earth and its elements directly, call upon such power as to decimate the forces that pose a threat to its balance. I have read so many of such stories and cannot help but imagine what our life would be if our own Mother Nature is even remotely similar to how Nature is portrayed in such stories.

Nowadays I have begun to believe that most of the stories need not be fantasy at all. Once you give in to the idea that this earth can and will react to anything done to it, the consequences and scale of reactions of such a possibility are staggering. Even if you don’t believe it is sentient or is a living entity, it would be seem a possibility simply by holding true to the third law of Newton… “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. Only in this case, it would be “Every action has an opposite but not necessarily equal reaction”.

It’s a frightening scenario. We already know we are the ones responsible for Global warming, don’t we? What if the tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, storms and such are just reactions to what we do to this planet? NO… I am not talking about divine retribution or a spirit curse on anything… just reactions by this planet to our actions? 

What if our Earth is really just trying to get back its balance, but no matter the cost (in our view)? 

Balance! That is the key word. 

Can anyone even begin to imagine how to contend with Nature’s powers… do anything against what it wishes to do? Are we foolish in even attempting to think about ideas to beat the power of the elements?

No wonder our ancestors were in awe and respect for Nature. I think I understand now.

Nothing to say

I will let the picture speak for itself.

Proud to be backward?

Ever had someone tell you, with a beaming face, that they are proud to be branded as belonging to a “backward” class?

I had a person tell me exactly that a couple of days ago.

Sad.

Some insightful quotes

From the Sword of Truth series by Terry GoodKind:

“Sometimes that’s all life is: one desperate act after another.” - Zedd

“When you are out numbered, and the situation is hopeless, you have no option-you must attack!” - Richard

“Third Time tricked, marks the fool.” - Richard

“Everything is valuable under the right conditions. To a man dying of thirst, water be more precious than gold. To a drowning man, water be of little worth and great trouble.” - Adie

Whats for dinner?

Obi was walking down the corridor when his friend Tang called him from his room.

“Oi Obi, wassup man? Didn’t see you for two days!”

“Ya know what happened”, Obi replied with a sour face. “That mad man JD went crazy on me when I was cleaning up the dining floor.”

“Yeah, well… you shouldn’t have talked back when he asked you to clean his room first, dude. He is one mean a**hole. Getting back to work tonight?”

“I guess… whachoo doing? writing another letter? Dude, get over it! She is not coming back!”

“Says you! I didn’t land up in here because I wanted to. She will realize it pretty soon!”

“Whatever… wanna join me for dinner? I can’t begin work until the floor’s closed, ya know!”

“Whats for dinner? I hope its not the same crap they put yesterday night”.

“I guess it is the same… well, pull yourself up. Either way it don’t matter. If we are gonna be here for the next year with JD as the head of kitchens in this jail, you might as well get used to it”.

Fine thoughts

Just thought I could share with you all some insightful quotes I heard/ read recently.

“Sometimes, anger can help you survive.” “So can faith!” – From the movie X-MEN

“You talk to God, you’re religious. If God talks to you, you’re psychotic.” – From the TV series “House”

“It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends.” – J K Rowling in her book “Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone”

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.” – J.R.R. Tolkien in the book series “Lord of the Rings”

“Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.”

“There is magic in forgiveness you grant and more so in forgiveness you receive.” – Terry Goodkind

Reflections

I give counsel and hope to many people, yet I despair when times are dire.

Many people think I am too philosophical. I just consider them to be too mundane.

Speaking lies is extremely bad. But you don’t have to tell the full truth either!

You don’t need poverty or disease to make life miserable. Unbridled lust and hate will do just fine for that purpose.

Most practical solution for happiness?

nāsti buddhir ayuktasya na cāyuktasya bhāvanā
na cābhāvayataḥ śāntir aśāntasya kutaḥ sukham - Bhagavad Gita 2.66

“One who is not connected with the Supreme can have neither transcendental intelligence nor a steady mind, without which there is no possibility of peace. And how can there be any happiness without peace?“

Food or Smokes?

The man looked decent enough, with his pressed shirt, trimmed beard, neat trousers and polished shoes. Given the laptop case held in his left hand and the proximity to the software company nearby, he would have probably been an IT professional in that company. He had somethings in his right hand and was walking away from a small pavement store.

Suddenly, he tripped on a pavement stone and fell forward. To protect his face, he used the only leverage he had that time… his right hand. Consequently, whatever he held in his hand… a small biscuit pack, 2 cigarettes and his keys… were thrown away in to the muddy slush on the side of the pavement from the previous day’s rain.

He managed to pull himself up and looked painfully at the items strewn in the mud. Then slowly, he took his keys from the ground, shook them to remove the mud and put them in his trouser’s pocket. Then he picked up the two cigarette, wiped them with his hand kerchief and kept those in his shirt pockets. A disgusting look came on his face, looking at the small biscuit pack lying in the mud, the wrapping intact… he just turned and started walking away.

Happy New Year

May this New Year 2008 bring prosperity, harmony, good experiences and peace of mind to you!

Oneness… yeah right!

I don’t read tamil magazines a lot, but for the last couple of months I keep seeing in them advertisements endorsing what I believe to be the most dubious, nonsensical and probably the least appealing ‘divine couple’. Nicknamed as “Amma Bhagavan” , the male half has been around for a longer time in the name of “Kalki Bhagavan”… apparently the female half wanted in on the fetid glory showered on the male half by stupefied fools.

Propagating a preposterous and perverted philosophy of “Oneness”, all this “divine couple” and their group does is charge upwards of $5000 for their “oneness blessing” process trainings! (Damn! And here I am, having second thoughts about whether I should really pay $500 for my scrum master training! Life is strange!!)

And here’s the kill… from the FAQ page of the web site of the ‘university’ started by this… this… err… whatever

08. What is your response to the recent allegations against the movement?
We suggest that you follow your heart.

Yeah, follow your heart… fo..ll..ow.. yo..ur… he..ar..t! Nicely done! Couldn’t have thought of a better answer. Sounds like a Jedi from the Star Wars movies, doesn’t it? How else could they put the blame on the person if things went sour in the course of time for him/ her? “Hey! Your heart told you to join us! We didn’t! *shrug*”.

For those of you who would like to know more about these, head over to http://guruphiliac.blogspot.com, where you can find a lot of information on this group and more.

The 600 crore Shakti Amma

I have absolutely zero tolerance for the new age gurus who claim themselves and/or everybody to be God. Thirty-one year old Mr. Shakti Amma seems to be the latest addition to the list.

Claiming himself to be an ‘avatar’ (divine incarnation) of the ‘Narayani’ aspect, he has built a Rs.600 crore ($153 million) temple for Mahalakshmi (the consort of Lord Vishnu) and gilded the outside and insides of the temple with gold. The website of this new kid on the ‘I am a God’ block describes him as being capable of exhibiting mystical powers (siddhis) and that has done so many miracles.

*Sigh* As long as gullible people are around, these ‘avatars’ will never cease to manifest every now and then.

Are you a “brahmana”?

This is a story from the Chandogya Upanishad, about a boy named as Satyakama Jabala.

“Once, Satyakama, the son of Jabala, asked his mother, ‘I want to live as a brahmacari. Which dynasty (gotra) do I belong to?’ Jabala answered, ‘My son, I do not know which dynasty you belong to; in my youth I served as a midservant in various places and at that time begot you as my son. Therefore I don’t know which gotra you belong to. My name is Jabala and your name is Satyakama. Therefore you should say that your name is Satyakama Jabala.’

Thereafter Satyakama Jabala approached Haridrumata Gautama and said, ‘I wish to live with you as a brahmacari.’ Gautama replied, ‘O gentle one, which dynasty do you belong to?’ Satyakama replied, ‘ I do not know which dynasty I belong to. I asked my mother and she said, ‘I begot you as my son when I was wandering in my youth as a maidservant. Therefore I do not know which dynasty you belong to. My name is Jabala and your name is Satyakama. So I am called Satyakama Jabala.’ Gautama then said to him, ‘My dear son, no one other than a brahmana can speak such truth that you have spoken. Therefore you are a brahmana, and I accept you’.

I wonder how many so called ‘brahmins’ of the present age can really call themselves as “Brahmanas” based on this yardstick.

Obnoxiously obsessed

I don’t usually watch much of the regional cable channels (thanks to Discovery, NatGeo, HBO, CNN etc…), but while browsing through the channels yesterday evening, the “Makkal” TV caught my attention. There was this guy singing in a voice that would rival any bulldozer and his troupe was playing some really horrible music, if I might add.

I was wondering why the hell would someone want to publicly humiliate himself (and others) and then the lyrics caught my attention. He was singing in praise of tamil, in tamil, while berating people about using the “Northern Language” (presumably Hindi/ sanskrit here).

Then it suddenly dawned on me… this was just another tamil obsessed idiot, being paid for self-humiliation by a channel run by cronies of an equally demented crackpot.

Honestly, people need to have better idea of of “ideologies”!

(My previous article on Tamil Obsession can be found here)

Sharif: PM… who? me? Nah!

Sharif’s nomination papers rejected

One day after I read this news, I find one more.

I don’t aspire to be PM again: Sharif

Sour Grapes?

The Sari and veshti

So, we had a small celebration at work last Friday, wherein everyone was supposed to come in their ‘traditional’ dress. No problem! I just picked up a nice ‘veshti’ (dhoti) and a cotton shirt and voila! I was looking as smart as anyone in a pressed pinstripe.

All the ladies were there in their ’saris’, adding glitz here and there… men came in normal shirts with dhotis and some in north indian attire too, though many men/ boys didn’t care about wearing any traditional dresses. Their lack of enthusiasm/ interest in participating in the fun activities was confounding.

Nothing matches the elegance of a woman in a properly selected and worn sari. The same goes for the men too… a good combination of dhoti with good borders and proper cotton shirt has its own commanding appeal.

Warcraft is the craze!

I was (and still am) a devoted fan of the MMORPG “World of Warcraft” from Blizzard, with currently more than 6 million people playing it worldwide. (Unfortunately, I am not able to play it from India… Chris Metzen, you listening, dude? Get a damn server in to India! And make it as a RP realm, while you are at it.)

Anyhooo…. just yesterday, I got my hands on two other games published by the same company. “Warcraft III - Reign of Chaos” and “Warcraft III - The Frozen Throne”. These are RTS games similar to the Age of Empires series, but a million times better with an engrossing storyline to boot!

I would recommend all the three games for any serious gamer to tryout.

Funny survey…

But I am able to make some very deep infereneces. Yeah… thats just me! *shrug* 

Last month, a worldwide survey was conducted by the UN — The only question asked was: “Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?”

The survey was a HUGE failure.

In Africa they didn’t know what “food” meant.

In Eastern Europe they didn’t know what “honest” meant.

In Western Europe they didn’t know what “shortage” meant.

In China they didn’t know what “opinion” meant.

In the Middle East they didn’t know what “solution” meant.

In South America they didn’t know what “please” meant.

And in the USA they didn’t know what “the rest of the world” meant.